Bowie’s in space. So farewell then, Commander Hadfield. After five months tweeting us stunning images of ourselves from space , the Canadian astronaut came back to Earth but not before uploading the first pop video from outer space: his goosebumps-inducing version of Space Oddity . For your services to science, education and the use of social media, we properly salute you. Latakia, Syria - deceptively calm and beautiful, strife-torn on the shore on the sea. Peaceful from such a distance. http://t.co/SoWWZ5BU — Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) [...]
Thinking of escaping the impending crowdsourced embarrassing crap deluge? There's no point. Content is king supposedly. For years now, we’ve been making videos, music, blogs, whatever and getting these things out there. We may be doing this for fun, self-promotion or a genuine desire to inform, but our friends in the Marketing Dept want in. They have been getting all excited about ‘content marketing’ this last while (probably prompted by the changes in how Google ranks content online - basically, the good stuff will rise to the top). However, one agency reckons as [...]
The pauper and the millionaire at the same ATM . An image of two receipts found at a New York ATM did the rounds this week and made us think about the type of wealth disparity that exists. One customer has a balance of over a million dollars while the other has insufficient funds. They are both litterers though. Deceased man fails to pay Virgin Media bill . Every week another company has a painful learning experience connected with social media. When Virgin Media sent an automated bill that acknowledged that the customer was [...]
Boston As events seem to be coming to some kind of tragic conclusion as I write, the roles of social vs traditional news media are once more under scrutiny. Breaking news through Twitter and Facebook is certainly fast but that speed is acquired by sacrificing context and verification say many. io9 outline some of the ways in which the Twitter activity around the Boston Marathon give us hope that ‘ our social media networks may be maturing into trusted news sources ’. Silver Surfers (again) ‘My social friends want me to tweeter and to [...]
One Billion Downloads... Incredibly, almost 4 million single music downloads are sold each week in the UK. On Monday, the Official Charts Company reported that the billionth single download was sold since legal downloads became available nine years ago. Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’ is the UK’s best selling download. Ding Dong! Margaret Thatcher died on Monday kicking off another story about downloads. A Facebook campaign to get ‘Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead!’ from The Wizard of Oz to chart began to yield dividends with the track currently [...]
In the week that the mobile phone turned 40 (a fortnight after I did), we finally get word of a “Facebook phone”. Not actually a device though, Facebook Home is something between an operating system and an app on a Android phone. Basically, the phone uses Facebook as your way of being online. Wired is underwhelmed but acknowledge its appeal pointing out that for many people ‘Facebook is the Internet’ and ‘Facebook Home is going to be the best way for those people to experience the Internet on [...]
I’ve been on hiatus for two weeks to attempt to escape my 40th by flying to Chicago and then celebrating my little brother’s wedding. More on that later. Equal Marriage. You’ll have noticed that many profiles on Facebook and elsewhere have turned red in support of equal marriage which is currently being discussed by the US Supreme Court. As with any viral activity, plenty of variations on the original image from the Human Rights Campaign have also appeared: http://www.flickr.com/photos/h umanrightscampaign/sets/721576 33101425657/ [...]
With the impending changes to the notorious News Feed (and the attending cries from users wanting the old one back), perhaps now is a good time to take a break from Facebook? Please Include Attribution to OnlineCollegeCourses.com With This Graphic.
More Bowie! The Next Day is almost upon us and Bowie has played us like a boss. Here are four things today's bands can learn from the freaky bastard © Flight of the Conchords . Oh, and the album is rather good ( if I may say so myself ). Facebook are at it again . Steel yourselves as over the next few weeks, Facebook hopes to make it easier to control the content appearing in the News Feed. Initial reactions draw comparisons with the Google+ layout and, encouragingly, [...]
This week is about stealing positives from negatives. People of Groupon , After four and a half intense and wonderful years as CEO of Groupon, I've decided that I'd like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding - I was fired today. Things have been a bit shaky for daily-deals site, Groupon , of late. So, when their CEO and founder, Andrew Mason , got his marching orders this week, he posted his classy, witty [...]
BT released an astonishing 320-gigapixel panorama of London . Apparently, if this were a physical image, it would be ' almost as large as Buckingham Palace '. Thankfully some trees stop you from peering into our living room (others may not be so lucky). It’s funny how very peaceful the megacity seems... "When your heart stops beating, you'll keep tweeting , welcome to your social afterlife," offers LivesOn which will allow a ‘you’ to continue tweeting after you die. Services such as this and DeadSocial may be the contemporary equivalent of leaving letters [...]
Should you jump off a bridge if all your friends did? The Pope ‘pulls a Bowie’ and kickstarts the week in style with a shock announcement. Social media loves a good surprise with the event getting millions of mentions within hours. Benedict’s boss wasn’t terribly happy either . All of this rather overshadowed Madonna’s proper embracing of Instagram . You should be blogging . If an accountancy firm in London can see an i ncrease in website traffic of 383% , then it’s time to [...]
Facebook want to give you $20 million, Picard meets Carrie, reclaim your inbox and listen to a wonderful cover of This Woman’s Work. How much of the $20 million will *you* get from Facebook? Hint: Probably nothing. Last year Facebook settled a class action lawsuit about how it used people’s data as part of their Sponsored Stories advertisements ( long story ). It agreed to pay a whopping $20 million to those users in the USA who were ‘affected’. Kind of. [...]
Would you pass the Bitter Ex test? Twitter launch Vine, an 11-year-old girl writes her own inauguration speech and some London Grammar share some dreamy music. Facebook's Graph Search and the Bitter Ex test Facebook are in the process of rolling out Graph Search , a tool that will allow you to run queries such as find ‘photos that my friends took in New York before 1990’ or ‘family members who like ‘Dexter’. Tom Scott has been having some fun using the tool to [...]
The State of Social Media 2012 by The SEO Company (Hat tip to Eric Whelan for spotting this.) ____________________ Enda Guinan is a consultant and trainer offering advice on social media strategy for individuals and small businesses . Get in touch to see how you can make the best use of your time and energy as you put together your social media plans.
Everything ends. Newer visitors may be unaware of my once regular forays into digital DJing. This hobby happily exists alongside the rest of my digital life; it’s fun, scratches a creative itch and requires me to learn new things. The fact that the results have been downloaded thousands of times and fuelled house parties in Mexico, debauchery in Dublin as well as workouts in London is intensely gratifying and reward enough. It’s generated sales and exposure too for some of the artists whose work I used. Sure it’s anecdotal, but I’ve had people online [...]
In the US, a couple of sportsmen are having truth 'issues', but over here, we're either giggling about horse meat or talking sides in the unfortunate transgender slur business that's been inflating the word count for several London columnists. What better time to recommend an app that helps solve sticky problems? Enough with the horse jokes already. It’s all about #horseburgers in the UK and Ireland this week. With the discovery of horse and pig DNA in some beef burgers on sale in several [...]
The shetland hit the fan for Tesco and other retailers in the UK and Ireland when horse DNA was discovered in certain beef burger products. As usual, the denizens of Twitter make hay while it shines... Horsemeat found in Irish burgers Horse DNA has been found in some beef burgers being sold in Irish supermarkets, the Republic of Ireland's food safety authority has said. The FSAI said the meat came from two processing plants in Ireland, Liffey Meats and Silvercrest Foods, and [...]
Over the last couple of years I've turned into one of those weird people who gets up early on Saturday (and other days) and goes for long runs. This whole running enterprise is a most precarious thing as it can easily be derailed by bad weather, tiredness, twinges or offers of brunch. Therefore, I have to make sure that I have a range of motivating factors to counterbalance the evil distracting forces; competition is good (guilt is even better) and who doesn't love lovely stats? I've been relying on the lovely attractive stats that are generated [...]
This week one small business got a self-inflicted tough lesson in online transparency, and that Lego are amazing (but we already knew that). Ring Of Ire: Jewellers vs Facebook Pages If you have a Facebook Page for your business or service, you may know that you can allow other Facebook users to administer your Page . I, for example, administer several Pages for myself and on behalf of clients. Being an Admin is generally straightforward, but sometimes one can forget to switch and may post something using the wrong identity. Skillens [...]
Daddy or Chips?
PREVIEW: Hyperbits – Karekare (Original Mix)
The Cosmonauts :: Shaker
Deadmau5 Returns With Techno Track "Monophobia" After Being Absent For Months
Listen to the Japanese Song that Grimes is Obsessed With
